The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 64: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE CONTENTS OF THE DESK 45 has produced all which we have just been describing. And now she sits down and reads it calmly and deliberately. Oh, with what a calmness! It is the calmness which the ocean of hyperborean regions displays when frozen into solid ice, — the calmness of that glacial spell which can alone tranquillize the mighty waters that if the talismanic power were removed would boil and rage in all the wild ebullition of the tempest. It is the calmness of the volcano that sleeps under a power superior to its own, when its lava is hardened into petrifaction, but which, if the spell should be removed, and a spark should be set to the inflammable concrete, would pour forth the gush of the burning levin. Eliza read the letter mechanically, deliberately, from the first word to the last. It was finished, and then only did she display any outward emotion; then only was it that a strange expression — a sad expression indeed to be seen upon the countenance of one so young and beautiful — passed slowly over her features, while simultaneously a glacial tremor trailed itself as slowly through her entire form. ‘““T thank thee, O God, for one thing,’’ she said, in a voice which seemed as if borne upon a breath of ice, — ‘‘ and only for one thing. The rest is all dark — horrible — frightful — incredible! ”’ It did not seem to strike her that she had given utterance to something savouring of impious blasphemy, in accepting only one of the many dispensations of Providence on which her thoughts were evidently fixed. But she was in that state when the human soul is so chilled by despair that the form to which it belongs is but a breathing, animated marble statue. She looked over the remaining papers in the desk. There was another letter, in the same handwriting, of a recent date, —a very recent date, — and this also Eliza read. Again were her feelings excited poignantly, horribly, agonizingly; and for some minutes she was convulsed with the tortures of anguish, while the tears rained down her cheeks. She wrung her hands, too, — yes, wrung them bitterly, bitterly; and it was long ere she recovered even the calmness of de- spair. Then she again looked into the desk, but there was nothing more to interest her. Impossible indeed would it have been for any other paper to produce a state of being more deplorable, more deserving the whole world’s com- (EONMIELNOO KS (EO)